


Over Hill Over Dale

by GeorgeDavis



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Eventual Smut, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 21:53:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18352436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeorgeDavis/pseuds/GeorgeDavis
Summary: AU. Set in early 60's Bernie Wolfe is a farmer living alone. Serena Campbell is the matron at the local village hospital. Their days go by uneventfully until they are brought together after a shattering accident threatens to ruin Bernie's livelihood. This sets off a chain of events that will rock the normally peaceful village and their lives as past and present collide to create a future neither could have foretold.





	Over Hill Over Dale

CHAPTER 1

It was a windy day as Bernie trudged up the track that led from the bottom field to the little cluster of farm buildings that was Dalefoot Farm. Her tousled blonde hair whipped up in the breeze – getting into her eyes and irritating her no end.  
“Bloody Nora!” she muttered to herself as she walked into the stable. There was the shire horse, Eileen, staggering about in the last stages of labour. Poor Eileen was groaning and foaming at the mouth. Her eyes looked wild and Bernie knew from experience that she was probably going to have to assist the mare on this one. She approached Eileen and nuzzled her nose, whispering words of calm and empathy all the while. She worked her way to the side of the horse, gently feeling her abdomen and pelvis as she went. She flung off her woollen jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her checked shirt. Reaching inside the horse, she realised she couldn’t feel the foal’s head – it was breach and stuck in the birth canal. There was no time to call the vet – she was going to have to pull it free to save both their lives.  
Still talking to Eileen in low, steady tones to calm her she worked to move the foal in small incremental stages to begin with. Pulling on the foal’s legs with her strong and capable hands, her arm muscles tensing and relaxing with the rhythmical contractions of the mother horse, her freckled face resting against Eileen’s haunch - here was a woman at the peak of her powers, at the height of her experience. After 20 minutes, the foal came free and slithered into her arms in a gush. She cleaned the gunk from the young foal’s mouth and laid it with great care and love on the clean straw to recover from the difficult birth. Eileen shifted round in the stall and started to lick and nudge the gangly-legged creature, all the while whinnying softly.  
“There you go girl, there you go,” Bernie said quietly.  
She would never really get used to these little miracles of life. The way life just finds a way to be.  
A few minutes later, the little horse staggered to its feet and the process was complete.  
Bernie went outside and washed her arms and hands down in the outdoor tap. The gush of cold water felt good over her tired muscles. Flinging on her jacket again, she noticed the wind had started to blow even more strongly. She was going to have to put the big prop on the barn door which was threatening to break loose in the gale.  
The oak tree (or the grumpy old oak tree as several generations of Wolfe family had affectionately called it) had stood at the corner of the barn for 525 years. 525 years it had stood proud and strong and this was the moment its large lower limb had decided to break free of the rest of the tree and swing down to earth with a loud crack. This precise moment when Bernie Wolfe happened to be standing below and a little to the side of the grumpy old oak. A testament to her quick reactions that the branch did not kill her outright but caught her own lower limb – her femur – producing a slightly quieter crack and causing her to white out with shock.

 

*************

 

Bernie came to with the quiet whirring and murmuring sounds of the women’s ward at St. Francis of Assissi hospital in the neighbouring town of Puddleworth. Her leg was still agonisingly painful but she felt a strange kind of acceptance - as if she didn’t care the pain was there. A crisp white uniform appeared beside her and a clean citrus smell.  
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time I’m afraid. A tree branch fell on you and broke your leg,” the clipped but caring tone of the matron cut through some of the blur. “We’ve put you on morphine for now and I think you should know that you will have to remain here to convalesce for at least six weeks.”  
Bernie’s voice came out in a cracked and thirsty whisper. “But the farm... But I can’t... there’s no one...”  
“That’s enough for now Miss Wolfe. Don’t worry yourself, don’t fret. We will sort something out for now.”  
“But...”  
“No buts please Miss Wolfe. Trust me I will see to the matter. Now go back to sleep – you need to rest.”  
And even though this was a stranger – Bernie felt that she did trust this woman. Trusted her completely. Which made no sense at all. She struggled with these thoughts – and with thoughts of her animals for a few seconds longer and lost consciousness again. This time she fell into a warm dreamless sleep – with the smell of something citrus lingering in the air.

 

**************

 

The citrusy matron – Serena Campbell – returned to her office. It was a simple room, sparsely decorated and functional. Behind her desk, hung on the wall, was a large wooden crucifix. A different kind of grumpy old oak. On her desk was a sepia photo of her, her husband, his mother and their daughter Eleanor dressed in Edwardian costumes. It had been taken in a novelty photo booth when the fair had come to town. Her normally urbane husband had taken to it quite readily – much to Serena’s surprise. He was nice chap – a butcher by trade – but not given to racy adventures of the photo booth variety. Or any variety come to think of it. Still, he was kind and she knew she’d be moaning if she so much as spoke a word of complaint against him. And if there was one thing Serena Campbell did not like – it was a moaner or a defeatist.  
Serena Campbell had been Matron at St. Francis of Assissi for the last 15 years. Nowadays, people would say that she was a woman with ambition – an alpha – someone who had drive to succeed in her chosen career. In Puddleworth in 1964, however, she was more just part of the furniture in the minds and lives of the local populace. Not a threadbare couch so much as a Welsh dresser – the good china on display – all balanced precariously on solid wooden shelves. Oak or mahogany. Nothing namby pamby like pine.  
Serena was well known in these parts as a woman Who Could Get Things Done. She was friends with the local vicar, Gerard Hopley, the Chief Constable, Manfred Williams, the Headmistress of Puddleworth Church of England Primary and she herself was Chair of the Women’s Institute, the Horticultural Society and the Village Twinning Society (Puddleworth was linked with Ville de Circe in Southwestern France). She also baked the best lemon drizzle in the county and generally everybody knew that nothing stumped her.  
But this was different. Bernie really had no one to help. This was an independent woman indeed. No outside help required here – she might as well have had the sign tattooed onto her forehead. The poor woman’s family had been decimated by the war. I suppose that’s what four brothers and no mother will do for you, Serena thought. How has she survived all that intact? Maybe she isn’t really intact. But still, Serena felt an overriding respect for this woman farmer. This single-handed independence vigilante. She’d been too harsh with the nurse – a young girl with the brains of a pigeon. But it was understandable given that background. What to do though? What to do? Serena had a reputation to uphold and defeat didn’t come into it.

 

************

 

A couple of hours after the dose of morphine was reduced to a less sleep inducing level, Bernie Wolfe started to hallucinate. Lambs wearing halos were bleating about mercy and then she saw her brother, Johnny, bleeding from the ear. She wanted him to see a doctor but he was stuck in the eerie darkness of a bunker. He couldn’t hear her dream self anyway. But it was so vivid she was sure she could do something if she could only get up from this bed. But she was stuck there, pinned to the sheets as if by an invisible force. If only she could do anything about anything. She awoke with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.  
The matron from yesterday was at her bedside. Bernie could have sworn she was glowing and her voice sounded slow like melting chocolate in her morphine addled ears.  
“You’re lovely,” Bernie announced.  
Serena felt a sudden blush rise in her cheeks. A blush that came completely out of the blue.  
“What?”  
“I told you... you’re lovely,” Bernie repeated in a slow purring drawl.  
Serena quickly got herself together, took stock and realised it was the morphine speaking. She couldn’t understand what had just happened. Why had she had such a silly reaction? Like a teenage girl. Honestly, she’d been working here too long – she was losing her marbles evidently.  
“I think that’ll be quite enough of that Miss Wolfe,” she said quietly. “I’ll get the nurse to bring you a cup of tea and biscuit. That usually helps patients return to themselves a little more.”  
Bernie’s eyes were laughing. Sparkling and laughing at her. Or with her. Her mouth – slightly turned up at one corner with amusement. How far was she actually under the influence? Serena shrugged and put it out of her mind. That was not the sort of thought someone from Puddleworth ought to have anyway. She’d seen this type of thing thousands of times and hadn’t blinked an eye.

 

***************

 

Berenice Wolfe came into the world on Dalefoot Farm – in the chicken shed in Dalefoot Farm to be completely accurate – a story her mother would tell friends, family and strangers indiscriminately and many times over – in 1921. Apart from her poor long suffering mother, she was the only girl in a family of men and boys. And she held her own because she had to. From the age of 3 she was collecting eggs from the hens, from 4 she was assisting in the delivery of lambs, from 6 she was driving the tractor. Mealtimes were survival of the fittest – and luckily she had lightning quick reactions – being the queen of snap no matter who she was up against from the age of 7.  
Eventually, after 17 years of mucking out, sheep dipping, dry stone wall building and shearing, she was desperate not to have to marry a farmer. Someone genteel and intelligent would be better. A doctor. Not a vet, no. No more animals. Nope – a doctor or a banker. Someone with smooth hands and a smooth beardless face that she could bear to kiss. Some of the cluts from the Young Farmer’s Society wouldn’t have known what to do with a razor if you’d paid them. No – bankers would never wear beards. And she’d never met a doctor with one either. Just didn’t happen. So she was decided on the matter.

On her 18th birthday, Churchill announced that the country was at war. So away went her brothers. Away to war went the inheritors of the farm.  
They never found out the details. She and her Dad sitting at the big kitchen table. Crammed in at one end – feeling small and insignificant. The telegrams came with their bald official typeface. Lost in action. Missing in action. Killed doing his duty. Lost his life in a hospital in Italy. They were bombarded with these little paper squares. And her Dad died of a broken heart. As people do sometimes. The doctor said he had died of complications from pneumonia. But she knew. She knew he had died of a broken heart. It was possible and it had happened to him. She cursed her own heart for being so strong when it should have just stopped if it knew what was good for it.  
So she stayed. And she plugged away and she never married. Couldn’t bear to have and love children if they could all be wiped out in a stupid war like that.


End file.
